ShadowStats.com Founder John Williams Explains the Risk of Hyperinflation

What can we do to avoid hyperinflation? What if we just shut down the Fed or something like that?

We can’t. The actions have already been taken to put us in it. It’s beyond control. The government does put out financial statements usually in December using generally accepted accounting principles, where unfunded liabilities like Medicare and Social Security are included in the same way as corporations account for their employee pension liabilities. And in 2008, for example, the one-year deficit was $5.1 trillion dollars. And that’s instead of the $450 billion, plus or minus, that was officially reported.

Wow.

These numbers are beyond containment. Even the 2008 numbers, you can take 100 percent of people’s income and corporate profit and you’d still be in deficit. There’s no way you can raise enough money in taxes.

What about spending?

If you eliminated all federal expenditures except for Medicare and Social Security, you’d still be in deficit. You have to slash Social Security and Medicare. But I don’t see any political will to rein in the costs the way they have to be reined in. There’s just no way it can be contained. The total federal debt and net present value of the unfunded liabilities right now totals about $75 trillion. That’s five times the level of GDP.

A d v e r t i s e m e n t

What can we, the people, do to stop the government from, you know, taking all our money?

We should have acted 20 years ago. There’s not much you can do at this point to prevent the eventual debasement of the dollar. This involves both sides of the political spectrum. It’s not limited to the Republicans or the Democrats. They’ve both been very active in setting this up.